Tamil (Indic) font support in TCPDF in FA does not support consonants in vowels on both it's sides

[apmuthu]

The unofficial ta_IN Tamil Language extension for FA displays correctly in the browser but does not render correctly in PDF reports. Excel reports are fine though.

In Debian Squeeze, it is installed with:

sed -i -e 's/# ta_IN UTF-8/ta_IN UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen
dpkg-reconfigure --frontend=noninteractive locales

Additional Tamil fonts can be installed in Debian Squeeze with:

apt-get install ttf-tamil-fonts

Tamil Font Installation is discussed in the FA forums.

Online fonts and conversions are at:
http://www.xml-convert.com/en/convert-tff-font-to-afm-pfa-fpdf-tcpdf
http://azhagi.com/freefonts.html

[apmuthu]

Browser Display

[apmuthu]

Excel Report Rendering

The worksheet name is mangled.

[apmuthu]

Poor rendering of PDF reports in both browser and external reader

[apmuthu]

Although:
ட + ு = டு
0B9F + 0BC1
the following is displayed:
ட ு

Ila.Sundaram font is used but all Unicode fonts like Akshar, etc have the same issue.

[apmuthu]

[apmuthu]

Generation of Tamil Unicode font files:

C:\php53\php tcpdf_addfont.php -b -t TrueTypeUnicode -f 32 -i Sundaram.ttf,SundaramB.ttf
C:\php53\php tcpdf_addfont.php -b -t TrueTypeUnicode -f 96 -i SundaramBI.ttf,SundaramI.ttf

Each font will have a ttf, z, php and ctg.z extensions that need to be uploaded to the reporting/fonts folder.
The file tcpdf_addfont.php is in the original TCPDF v4.0.027 release in the tcpdf/tools/ folder.

Reference links:
http://symbolcodes.tlt.psu.edu/bylanguage/tamilchart.html
http://www.wazu.jp/gallery/Fonts_Tamil.html
http://barathonline.blogspot.sg/2008/03/tamil-fonts-collection_06.html
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18200919/using-unicode-with-tcpdf
http://rrbits.com/epb/2013/02/23/tcpdf-indic-script-support/
http://www.azhagi.com/fonts-sample5.html
http://www.higopi.com/fonts/
http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/indic-overview/

[apmuthu]

The necessary Tamil FA font files are at http://www.apmuthu.com/frontaccounting/sundaram_tamil_fonts.zip

The ta_IN language extension needs to be detailed in the lang/installed_languages.inc file and is available for download.

[apmuthu]

TAMIL LETTER TTA
2975 (Dec) => 0B9F
Category: Letter, Other [Lo]

TAMIL VOWEL SIGN U
3009 (Dec) => 0BC1
Category: Mark, Spacing Combining [Mc]

Tamil Unicode Block
From U+0B80 To U+0BFF
72 characters
No Mirroring
BIDI: LTR
UTF Browser Test

Supported Fonts
Support Font
100% FreeSerif
100% GNU Unifont
100% Unicode BMP Fallback SIL
99% Code2000 (71 of 72)
99% LastResort (71 of 72)
85% Arial Unicode MS (61 of 72)
68% Samyak_Multilingual (49 of 72)
14% Segoe UI (10 of 72)
14% Segoe UI Bold (10 of 72)
14% Segoe UI Light (10 of 72)

FreeSerif supported Tamil character fonts are here:
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/freefont-ttf-20120503.zip
http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freefont/freefont-otf-20120503.tar.gz

[apmuthu]

http://www.unicode.org/faq/indic.html

Character width adjustments:
http://bytethinker.com/blog/correct-display-of-imported-fonts-in-tcpdf

[apmuthu]

Possible Alternatives to TCPDF for Tamil / Indic Scripts:

• mPDF
• yii2-mpdf
• Automatic Transliteration among Indic Scripts Using Code Mapping Formula